Mackerel taking a tour of the Herring Loophole

Víkingur is alongside in Vopnafjörður after docking Tuesday night with 820 tonnes of mackerel on board. The catch was taken in five tows in the Herring Loophole deep east of Iceland, with most of the fish caught in three tows on Monday.

‘Everything went like clockwork. Fishing has been mainly very good, although it drops off for a few hours occasionally. The mackerel are moving fast and it looks like it’s going round in a circle now it’s out there. We have followed the mackerel in every direction, and as we finished fishing this time, the fish were heading westwards fast. By then we were back where we had started fishing,’ said Víkingur’s skipper Albert Sveinsson.

He said that the mackerel migration is certainly growing in the Herring Loophole.

‘We can see it from the size of the fish. In the last trip the mackerel were all much the same size at around 500 grammes when we were fishing off the south-east. In this trip the fish were smaller at an average of around 460 grammes. On the steam home to Iceland we also saw mackerel marks on the way, so there’s no telling if we might drop into some good fishing when we’re steaming out again,’ Albert Sveinsson said.